Our team member Devon Indar has just received official notification that he has been awarded a PhD for his diessertation on the “Oxidation of Alcohols Using Heterogeneous Au/TiO2 Catalysts”. Congratulations Devon!

Congratulations are in order to our group member Chris Maher, who passed his PhD viva today subject to only minor corrections to his dissertation entitled “OPTIONS FOR TREATMENT OF LEGACY AND ADVANCED NUCLEAR FUELS”.

It was announced today that the VERSOX soft X-ray spectroscopy beamline project at DIAMOND Light Source Ltd has been funded. Sven was one of the original proposers of this project, and as a member of the VERSOX Working Group he contributed to developing the case for supporting this beamline project. This beamline will provide our research team with a unique instrument for studying local interactions in organic materials, their nucleation – and surface chemistry in general. What makes VERSOX unique is its versatility – extending the use of soft X-ray spectroscopy beyond its traditional confines in ultra-high vacuum surface physics and chemistry. For example, soft X-ray studies of ‘wet’ soft matter, practical catalytic systems, biomaterials, pharmaceuticals, liquids and solutions will become possible for the first time in the UK. Right from the design stage the project will also take account of the needs of applied science and industrial users. As such it matches perfectly onto our research philosophy, which brings together fundamental science with its practical application.

Our group is part of this newly EPSRC-funded consortium. Project partners are in the School of Chemistry, the University of Lancaster, Imperial College London, the University of Reading, Idaho National Labs (USA), the UK National Nuclear Laboratory and Serco Assurance.